I work from home two days a week and I love it. I’m trying to figure out a way to do it five days a week if I can.
I work from home three days a week. It’s 110 miles to the office (and again back home!), so it saves me a ton of money. It’s like getting a raise.
I get an extra 90 minutes of sleep, and can still start working 90 minutes early. I can work nine or even ten hours, instead of only eight. I get a lot more work done because I don’t have a chatty coworker distracting me. I don’t have to pay for parking or lunch. I can (and do) work in my pyjamas or shorts and a T-shirt. I don’t have to spend five (or more) hours driving. Downside: I usually miss out on goodies people bring in.
We don’t have a formal tracking system. I established a reputation for working hard, and my boss trusts me. Nevertheless, by my own volition I send her emails as I complete files.
When I was with another company a few years back, they let us telecommute on child-care days and during weather related events. I loved it & was good at it. Yes, I had to dig my heels in re: the you’re home, here’s your honey-do list. “No, I’m working. No, I can’t. Imagine I’m not here, get it out of your mind. No.”
Today, I’d love to, but every job out there concerning it seems to be a billboard to a sharks mouth looking to rip anyone who stops to read it up into lunch.
I live with just my dog so there should be minimal distractions, at least from other people. As far as I know my dog sleeps most of the day so I don’t think she will mind me being home.
I work for a major software company and have been telecommuting full time for the last couple of years.
I love it, and consider it a major benefit (which is good, because my company is a little stingy when it comes to raises). I don’t have to commute (company’s offices are both about 35-40 miles away, and in Bay Area traffic that can be anywhere from 1-2 hours on the road per day), I can work in my sweats, and I’ve never been a really social person so I enjoy working alone.
I have a separate office setup and nobody else is home during the day except the cats, so distractions are minimal. I like being home in case something comes that I have to sign for, or if I have to deal with a workman in the house. My boss is very easygoing (all my bosses here have been), and the philosophy is basically, “attend whatever meetings you need to and get your work done by the deadline,” which means I work a few extra hours during crunch times and don’t mind if I have to bug out an hour early occasionally during slow times. It all evens out.
I wouldn’t give it up without a fight at this point, and if I ever found myself having to look for another job (I hope I never do–I plan to stay with this company until I retire, at least from my end :P) then I would look for another telecommute position even if I ended up having to freelance. That’s how much I love it.
I work from home, and I love it. I love the lack of commute, I love being able to watch my kids grow up. I love that when I’m not around, the kids wonder where Daddy is, rather than the opposite. I’m frequently distracted, but I make up for it by working longer hours so that my longer workday is equal to an in-office worker’s normal workday. If I need alone time to work, I can go into a room and close the door, but I love the fact that my kids feel that I’m a constant presence in their lives.
In depends a lot on the communication styles of the people involved.
I’ve had jobs where people were in different locations anyway, so any communication had to be IM, email or phone; in those cases, working from home meant a better chair, comfier clothing and being able to dash to the baker’s for fresh bread (the baker was next door, so a trip there didn’t take longer than a trip to refill my water bottle would have in the office). I’ve had others where 90% of the communication happened around the water cooler: no access to the cooler meant missing on a lot of critical information.
Another factor is how much you crave social interaction with coworkers. When going in to the office means a 1h+ commute to spend 9h looking at the computer, except for a 1h meeting on wednesdays, there really isn’t much of a reason to pay for that office’s real estate.
And of course, who else is at home. I can’t work with my mother or one of my brothers around; my other brother or my nephews aren’t a problem at all, as they understand “I’m not here even if you can see me”.
ETA: after a week and a half on vacation, my coworker who apparently can’t think without talking is back. You know what else is work from home like? Silent! It’s silent!
I don’t much care for it. I have a hard time staying on task when I work at home, even when the wife and kid aren’t at home. It’s just too easy to turn on the streaming music over the speakers and fart around since nobody’s watching.
I work from home and generally love it. It’s pretty much how we all function in my group - so we’re all used to it.
The only problems I have with it are spouse issues - as zoid said, the people you live with need to understand that you are WORKING. You can not get up to get them a soda/sandwich, you can not listen to them drone on about something on TV - you are WORKING. They need to pretend you aren’t there. Just because they don’t understand what you are doing, you do and they need to leave you alone. He’s getting better, but it’s still a struggle at times.
If it will work for you depends entirely upon your personality but I’ll give you my experience.
I’ve been working at home 4 days per week since August of 2012. It’s amazing.
At first I worked too much. My laptop was right there and after all if I had been downtown I would still be driving home so why not work right? I was still getting up at my normal time and we were in a crunch time on my project so I worked from 7am to 6pm for about 2 months.
Then my boss sat me down and made it clear that this program was not designed to get me to work through my commuting time and that I needed to find some balance.
I set an alarm and most days I manage to log off at 5pm. I am still the same employee however and if something is going on and I’m needed I’ll stay later but I will also take an extended lunch the next day to balance - the same way I used to when I traveled downtown each day.
It’s awesome for my dogs. I take most conference calls on my cell so I can wander and let them in and out of the house if I don’t need to be reading my computer screen during the meeting.
Things that help:
Our office culture always supported the use of OCS (an office based version of windows messenger). All employees are logged in automatically when they connect to the network and while you can set your status to do not disturb when you are focusing on something the expectation is that will not be all the time. It’s faster and more casual than email although still archived so be professional.
The program was put into place for us because the company has space issues. We’ve had conference room issues for years so people are accustomed to meetings via conference lines even when we were all in the same building. We also have offices scattered across the GTA so being able to reach out and touch the person you’re working with has always been something that wasn’t necessarily possible.
Network upgrades to support the required traffic were put into place before they rolled out.
My manager is awesome at supporting and managing remote workers. Not all are.
I have a dedicated home office and no one home during my working hours. This makes things MUCH easier. Days when my husband is home sick or when he works from home it’s more challenging.
Downsides:
I was sick this summer, without the remote program I would have been unable to work for several weeks. Thanks to a modified schedule and great coworkers I was able to work but I worked full time from home instead of 80%. By the end of July I was so anxious to see actual people I wasn’t related to that I went in sooner than I should have. I don’t know if I could do 100% work from home for a long period.
I did discover though that I really don’t need to be in the office every week. I now only go in when I have a meeting that seems to me that it would go better with me in person. As a result my in office days are more like 1 per 2 weeks rather than 1 per week right now. Some of my coworkers go in even less. Our agreement is written that we will work from home at least 4 days a week so as long as we’re getting things done we have that flexibility.
I work from home 5 days a week, but also go into the office for a few hours 3 days a week. I thought I might have issues working from home, because I lack in self-discipline, but it’s been pretty cool. I love rolling out of bed and getting onto the computer and working in my PJs. I love the private bathroom. I love that I can still go online to any site from my home part of my computer. I love the flexibility and that if I feel like taking a nap, I can. As far as them calling me after hours, I don’t have that issue, as I have no landline and the only way they can reach me is if I am logged in.
I like it on occasion - would love it if I could do 1 or 2 days a week from home. But I have some trouble separating work and home life. During the day I can do a good enough job of getting my mindset on work, but when it’s time to stop working I have trouble adjusting back to home life. I’ll work later, and throughout the evening I’ll keep looking back to my office and think I need to back and get back online.
I’ve heard ads for a business near me that caters to people who don’t have a physical office to go to - pretty much exactly the type of job the OP is referring to. You can rent a small space from them and they provide you with a desk and office. They have a receptionist, a break room with coffee, conference rooms, and some IT staff that can fix computer problems should the need arise. Plus you get the benefit of being around other people so you don’t have that lonely feeling of being all by yourself. Some businesses encourage their out of town contractors to use these businesses and will help offset the cost.
I love it and work from home three days out of five. I was actually in a pilot program for telecommuting about seven or so years ago, and now, almost all of my team works from home at least two days per week. There are one or two holdouts who just don’t like the idea, or were unable to convince family of the “I’m physically here, but really at work, so leave me alone” concept.
Even before telecommuting, we were a highly collaborative geographically diverse group, with people coast to coast communicating primarily by email or instant messaging, so the transition was pretty smooth for everyone.
Love it. Wish I could do it more than about once very other week but mgt is afreed, controlling and not willing to do the mgt things necessary to make sure the office is staffed so I doubt that will ever happen. Not having to commute is heavenly and I can focus on the task at hand without distractions. It’s a huge morale booster.